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Book of the Month

A reason to read...

Grown men aren't supposed to cry. But in this fascinating anthology, one hundred men - distinguished in literature and film, science and architecture, theatre and human rights - confess to being moved to tears by poems that haunt them.

Poems that Make Grown Men Cry by Anthony & Ben Holden

Representing twenty nationalities and ranging in age from their early 20s to their late 80s, the majority are public figures not prone to crying. Here they admit to breaking down when ambushed by great art, often in words as powerful as the poems themselves.

From J.J Abrams to John le Carré, Salman Rushdie to Jonathan Franzen, Daniel Radcliffe to Nick Cave, Ian McEwan to Stephen Fry, Stanley Tucci to Colin Firth, and Seamus Heaney to Christopher Hitchens, this collection delivers private insight into the souls of men whose writing, acting, and thinking are admired around the world.

Seventy-five percent of the selected poems were written in the twentieth century, with more than a dozen by women. Their themes range from love in its many guises, through mortality and loss, to the beauty and variety of nature. Three men have suffered the pain of losing a child; others are moved to tears by the exquisite way a poet captures, in Alexander Pope's famous phrase, "What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd."

Meet the Authors: Anthony & Ben Holden

Anthony Holden is an award-winning journalist and biographer who has published more than 30 books, including lives of Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky and Laurence Olivier. He is also the author of three autobiographical books about poker, as well as translations of opera and ancient Greek plays and poetry.

Ben Holden is a writer and film producer. Like his father, he lives in London and studied English at Merton College, Oxford.